1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the field of monitoring and controlling electronic access to data and processing on remote computers, and more particularly relates to providing one time access to processing on remote computers.
2. Description of Related Art
Many applications which operate on computers connected to electronic communications networks receive data from remote computers. The data received from remote computers may be provided by a data base server on the remote computer or by a process executing on the remote computer which produces the data. The remote computer may be used to distribute processing among different processors or the remote computer may be operated by a different business entity and provides the data under a contract or Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Requesting information from remote computers is often performed when assembling information to provide in a report. An example of automated report generation that often access data from remote computers is assembling information to transmit to a person using an Internet World Wide Web (WWW) browser. A person using a WWW Browser may request a set of information from a server computer and that server computer may request and receive data from a remote computer in order to assemble the complete set of information requested.
An example of an application that requires data to be retrieved from a remote computer is an Internet retailer that out sources warehouse management to another company. A customer requesting information over the Internet about a product might also be provided with the quantity of that product that is available in the retailer's warehouse. In order to determine the quantity of that product that is available in the warehouse, the retailer's computer, which receives the request from the customer, queries the computer maintained by the warehouse management company to determine the inventory on hand. The quantity information is then received by the retailer's computer and integrated into the information sent to the customer.
The data stored on the remote computers is often private or not available to the general public. In order to control access to that data, a user authentication system must be implemented. Various user authentication systems exist in the prior art which are based on the identity of a user's account or computer requesting the information. This limits the processing architecture of systems that provide information to a large base of users. Accordingly, a need exists for a method and system to provide selective access to private computer resources over a communications network.